We are racing towards the last quarter of this year, and six months have already passed since I last shared an update from our Facebook State of Small Business report.
Since the early months of the pandemic, Facebook has been surveying small businesses worldwide at regular intervals to find out what they’re going through and what help they need.
Last week, we published the results of our latest survey of more than 35,000 small business leaders across 30 countries and territories, carried out this July and August.
It finds that closure rates are falling worldwide in most surveyed countries, a sign that slight business recovery is underway. But there is still a long way to go and many challenges to tackle.
In the Asia Pacific, we surveyed small businesses in Australia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam. There is both good and bad news from the survey.
First, the good news: Most SMBs on Facebook in the Asia Pacific countries we surveyed reported that they were operational or engaging in revenue-generating activities. The bad news is that their sales have dropped significantly.
More than half of SMBs surveyed said that their sales continue to be significantly lower, leading to cuts in employment. Businesses in Vietnam, Indonesia and Taiwan are struggling the most from the impact of COVID-19, as more than 75 per cent say that their sales performance decreased during this time.
There are some silver linings. One is that many small businesses have found success by shifting online. For some, moving online has been the difference between staying afloat or going under. For others, it’s given them a whole new lease on life.
Also Read: Leveraging digital-first CX for customer delight and business growth
Globally, the use of digital tools has increased during the pandemic, and it’s up again in this latest edition of the survey: 88 per cent of all businesses said they use digital tools compared to 81 per cent when I last wrote about it in April.
More than half of those surveyed expect their use of digital tools to be permanent. In the Asia Pacific, nearly 50 per cent of SMBs we studied on Facebook reported at least 25 per cent or more of their sales were made digitally.
The other silver lining is that women-owned businesses in the countries we surveyed in the Asia Pacific are doing as well or even better than their men-led counterparts in closures and sales performance. Taiwan is leading this trend with 92 per cent of female-led SMBs (vs 80 per cent of male-led SMBs) on Facebook reporting that they were operational or engaging in any revenue-generating activities, followed by Vietnam, Indonesia and Australia.
This is an exciting trend as last year; we saw the female-owned businesses were consistently harder hit than male-owned businesses.
Supporting these gains is vital as one Boston Consulting Group study has shown that if women and men participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could rise by approximately three to six per cent, boosting the global economy by US$2.5 trillion to US$5 trillion.
So what does this all mean? Throughout 2020 and 2021, our State of Small Business reports has painted a consistent and sobering picture. But the consistently positive takeaway from all the surveys is the power of digital transformation in helping businesses weather the storm.
This is why we continue to invest in new products and tools to help businesses connect with their customers and simplify day-to-day management.
Today, I’m excited to share five critical updates that will help businesses meaningfully connect with people:
Ads that click-to-message
Businesses can already buy ads that encourage people to message them, whether in Messenger, Instagram Direct, or WhatsApp. For example, Organicwa, a Thai restaurant, leveraged click-to-message ads to scale up its delivery operations.
Now, businesses can choose all the messaging platforms where they’re available to chat, and we’ll default the chat app in your ad based on where a conversation is most likely to happen.
Start a WhatsApp chat from an Instagram profile.
Instagram is the virtual storefront for many small businesses for customers to discover brands, and WhatsApp is the counter to discuss products, answer questions, and close sales.
Businesses can now add a WhatsApp click-to-chat button to their Instagram profile— and, starting soon, the option to create ads that click to WhatsApp directly from the Instagram app so that people can start a chat with just one tap. These updates will help small businesses find new customers and get business done.
Also Read: How one LinkedIn message changed the fate of my failing startup
Lead generation on Instagram
We will begin testing paid and organic tools to help small businesses find and qualify leads directly within the Instagram app in the coming months.
Advertisers use lead generation ads to connect with customers and connect leads in a more personal way while reducing costs — like Seoul Spa, a Vietnamese beauty clinic, did with their Messenger campaign, lowering their cost per lead by 72 per cent.
Facebook Business Explore
We will soon expand Facebook Business Explore in Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. By putting more businesses in front of interested people who are actively looking for them, Facebook Business Explore will help connect people with new and relevant companies in one easy and centralised place.
This will also help businesses reach new customers and drive deeper consideration that can lead to purchases.
Lastly, business owners have told us they want more separation between their personal and professional identities. To simplify this, we are testing Work Accounts, which will allow business users to log in and operate Business Manager without requiring a personal account.
Businesses will be able to manage these accounts on behalf of their employees and have access to enterprise-grade features like single sign-on integrations, giving them more control over the security of their employees’ accounts.
We are testing Work Accounts through the remainder of the year with a small group of businesses and expect to expand availability globally in 2022.
If you were to take away one thing from all this – it is the importance of business messaging in the post-COVID-19 world. Over the years, we’ve seen how person-to-person messaging has defined the norm for person-to-business communication.
This is why we will continue to invest in ways to help drive better business results across the customer journey. We see messaging as a powerful way for businesses to connect, support and build a bridge to their increasingly digital-savvy customers.
My goal in sharing these updates is to bring you along as we reimagine discovery and relevance for people, creators, and businesses. Together, we can build a vibrant digital economy with the potential to drive recovery and the next lap of economic opportunity for all.
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